LIVE REVIEW

Highlights: Ballads “Understand You” and “Dress of Laces” worked wonderfully for the acoustic setup, with their pearly guitar tones and direct, effective emotional lyrics.

Attendance: 1,900 (sold out)

Set length: Two hours, 15 minutes (not counting a 25-minute break)

Before the Texas-born country singer strummed a chord or sang a note of his seventh concert at the venue in as many summers, he took the stage with a camera and took photos of the cheering, appreciative, sold-out crowd. “Thanks for inviting us back to Meijer Gardens,” he said, later adding, “The sun is so high in the sky… I just wanted to see you folks lit up by the big man.” It set the tone for a lengthy two-plus-hour set of plaintive and sincere songs – and stories and banter in-between — that stretched well past sunset.

It may not have been planned that way. Thirteen songs in, an audience member near the front of the stage collapsed, prompting a 25-minute intermission. The ailing man appeared to be OK, waving to the crowd as paramedics wheeled him to an ambulance.

The break was a boon to the person at the mixing board. Prior to the interruption, Lovett’s reedy voice often was buried in the mix, which righted itself somewhat for the second half of the show. It’s odd that Lovett’s voice struggled to be heard, considering this year, he’s touring with his five-man Acoustic Band, not the 13-piece Large Band of Gardens shows past.

Without electric guitars, the evening was even more laid-back than most shows at Michigan’s most easygoing venue. Lovett opened the show with a cover of “Release Me,” a song popularized by Roy Clark and Engelbert Humperdinck (and not coincidentally, the title of Lovett's new album), followed by “White Boy Lost in the Blues." Both were a declaration of his roots in country and blues.

Backed by bassist Viktor Krauss (brother of singer/songwriter Alison Krauss), drummer Russ Kunkel, guitarist Keith Sewell, fiddle player Luke Bulla and longtime cellist John Hagen, Lovett was equally comfortable playing modern Americana strummers as he was with cowboy hoedowns, bluegrass stomps or melancholy ballads. He has carved a niche outside commercial country music, and Wednesday night’s concert proved he can be eclectic without sounding unfocused or inconsistent. Lovett just sounds like Lovett.

“Understand You,” a broken-relationship ballad with a lullaby-esque guitar melody and a sad, expressive Hagen solo, kicked off the strongest run of songs. He followed it with the uptempo “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” and “One Way Gal,” and capped the string with the affecting coming-of-age ballad “Dress of Laces,” which was a perfect display of pearly acoustic-guitar tones.

The crowd reacted strongly to humor-laden ditties “Girl with the Holiday Smile” and “She’s No Lady,” and cheered late in the set for a string of relatively straightforward country tracks “L.A. County,” “Private Conversation,” “If I Had a Boat” and “North Dakota.” Lovett wrapped the second half of the evening with the fast-shuffling “That’s Right (You’re Not from Texas)” and it’s happy fiddle, followed by big-truck ode “White Freightliner Blues.” The band showcased its chops during the encore rendition of “Can’t Resist It,” which featured lengthy violin, cello and guitar solos.

What makes Lovett musically relevant is his exploration of various and subtle iterations of country and western, which would have been more potent and prevalent with a better mix. But the audience didn’t seem to mind. The Gardens crowd loves Lovett, whether his band plays large, as in years past, or smallish and subdued, as it did Wednesday. The numbers say it all: seven years, seven shows, seven sellouts.